PSA: Team USA’s Junior Pan Pacific Team Spots Also at Stake at Olympic Trials

2024 U.S. OLYMPIC TRIALS

• June 15-23, 2024
• Lucas Oil Stadium — Indianapolis, IN
• LCM (50 Meters)
• Session Start Times (ET):
  • 11 a.m. Prelims
  • 7:45 p.m. Finals (varying based on broadcast needs)
• Meet Central
• Broadcast Info
• SwimSwam’s Definitive Guide to Trials
• Psych Sheets
• Live Results
• SwimSwam Preview Index
• SwimSwam Pick ’em Contest

While this meet is called the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, it’s also serving as the selection meet for another event later this summer – the Junior Pan Pacific Championships, which will take place in Australia, August 21st-24th.

You can read the full selection criteria, but we’ll give you the concise version.

Beyond the normal rules about being eligible to represent the USA in international competition, a swimmer must be between 14-18 years of age as of December 31st, 2024, and they can’t have made the Olympic roster.

From there, eligible athletes will be ranked in each event based on finish order at Trials. Finish order is determined based on how far a swimmer advances. So, any junior swimmer who makes the final will take priority over any swimmer who doesn’t, regardless of prelims times.

“Finish Order” means the order that Available Swimmers place in each Event at the Qualifying Competition. The results from the finals will be used to determine the Finish Order for the 1st -8 th places (the “Finals”). The results from the semi-finals will be used to determine the Finish Order for the 9th -16th places (the “Semi-Finals”). The results from the preliminaries will be used to determine the Finish Order for the 17th -24th places (the “Preliminaries”); however, if Semi-Finals are not conducted at the Qualifying Competition for a specific Event, the results from the Preliminaries will be used to determine the Finish Order for the 9th -16th places (here, also the “Semi-Finals”). Thus, swimmers in the Finals will be ranked higher in the Finish Order than swimmers in the Semi-Finals and Preliminaries, and swimmers in the Semi-Finals will be ranked higher in the Finish order than swimmers in the Preliminaries.

Rosters are capped at 20 swimmers per gender, so much like at other major meets, USA Swimming has a set selection procedure based on priorities.

1. Priority 1: best two finishing swimmers from the 100m and 200m freestyles.
2. Priority 2: best finishing swimmer in each of the other events.
3. Priority 3: third-best finishing swimmers in the 100m and 200m freestyles.
4. Priority 4: second-best finishing swimmers in the 100m fly, back, and breast.
5. Priority 5: second-best finishing swimmers in the other events.
6. Priority 6: fourth-best finishing swimmers in the 100m and 200m freestyles.

If taking all the swimmers who qualify under a particular priority means that the roster limit would get exceeded, then the tiebreaker will be based on how each’s swimmer’s finishing time compares as a percentage of the relevant Olympic Qualifying Time.

We’ll try to keep an eye on the likely roster over the course of this week, but with swimmers who qualify for the Olympics not being eligible, it’ll be tough to nail down the entire projected roster until the end of the meet.